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First up, when you buy all four of the ZP human character minis, you'll also receive a "Tubby" zombie for free!

Second, when you buy any FOUR ZP minis you'll receive a link to download Zombie Plague: The Boardgame. This print and play game features full color maps, cards, and card miniatures, is easy to learn and truly gives the feeling of a classic zombie movie. (Garden Gnomes and Weapon sprues are not included in this offer).

And the offers stack so if you order the 4 humans you'll get both Tubby AND the boardgame PDF.

On February 23rd we will be starting a Patreon campaign to produce a new series of Yva Starling: Troubleshooter comics. Supporters will see new pages early, will get to read the new Yva Starling Adventure Stories tale, plus other cool rewards.

In the meantime check out this awesome cover art by Ryan Howe with colors by Ronda Pattison!

Available now from RSquared Studios, a board game about four high school students who have the worst day ever. Their school and town have been overrun with flesh eating ghouls, their van has run out of gas, and now they are surrounded in a small farm house by an ever increasing army of the hungry dead. Only teamwork, courage, and good old fashioned luck can save them now. Join Crissy, Chelsea, Timmy, and John as they fight for their lives in Zombie Plague!

Zombie Plague is a remastered version of the cult classic board game and includes all the card miniatures, map pieces, dashboards, cards, and counters you need. Featuring artwork from the RSquared Studios comic Zombie Plague: The Day From Hell, this easy to learn game features fast action, fun characters, and grueling horror.

It was incredibly difficult to pick winners for this but we finally whittled it down to four. (The points were so close that two entrants tied for third.) We based our choices on both quality of painting and horde size. Thanks a million to all of our entrants, we saw some stunning collections and I hope that everyone who entered will share their work on their blogs and forum as every entry we received had something cool about it.

People who collect and paint zombie miniatures tend to be a bit obsessive. We want great survivor figures but we especially want lots and LOTS of zombies! To celebrate this, RSquared Studios is having a Zombie Horde Contest. We want to see the best painted and the overall largest hordes of zombie miniatures. Whether you call it a horde, a swarm, or a shamble we want to see your zombies!

1. Zombie miniatures from any manufacturer can be included as part of your horde.

2. Two images must be submitted, one of the overall horde to show how large it is and one close up of the front rank of the horde to show the quality of painting. Judging will be based on both overall size and quality of paint-job. Images should be at least 1000 pixels on the largest side and no larger than 3000 pixels on the largest side in JPEG format.

3. Please no photo manipulation other than basic color correction.

4. Images can be on a gaming board with relevant terrain or on a clear surface like a tabletop or floor.

5. Email your images to hellbox45@hotmail.com by May 12, 2014

Email hellbox45@hotmail.com with any questions. And good luck!

(Note: Copyrights to images will of course be retained by each entrant but we ask for permission to post images as part of this contest. By entering you grant us this right.)

Here is a revised ZP map that includes some new bits to help the game run more smoothly. Walls, windows, and doors are now clearly marked as well as a yellow bar that shows where a character needs to stand to search a square.

This file also contains dashboards for the four characters to keep track of weapons, items, and squares that they've searched.

Check out the new stretch goal mini for the Zombie Plague Kickstarter campaign. Dead Sexy is a former pin-up girl and dancer whose extraordinary muscle memory gives her a grace and speed unseen in other zombies. She's dangerous, fast, and Dead Sexy. Her paper mini and Zombie Plague game card can be found here:

So back in the mid 1990s I got involved with a project called noir: The Film Noir Roleplaying Game. It was meant to be a very open roleplaying system that allowed for a cinematic type of game to be run. The game itself turned out okay. My relationship with most of the people involved didn't. I stopped watching a lot of the old black and white crime films that I loved and went into a sort of anti-noir phase. The stress of making the game had soured me to the genre that I had once loved. But the experience itself was hugely valuable and I'd do it again in a minute. But this time it would get copyedited more.

Here's the cover art from noir by the great Howard Chaykin. While talking to him on the phone he told me that I had a voice like a child. I've been trying to deepen my voice ever since.

A few years back I started writing fiction again and found myself settling back into my old stomping grounds. I started a cooperative piece called The Dogfight with Chad Eagleton and it really empowered me to write more. The great thing about writing on the internet is that I immediately began to find like minded folks who were often more passionate than me when it came to creating crime fiction. One of these passionate bastards is Jimmy Callaway.

When Jimmy asked me for some artwork for the cover of Laura Robert's Black Heart Magazine that he was guest editing I said "heck yeah" and started brainstorming ideas for a cover. The thing I kept coming back to was the Saturday night special, a small and cheap handgun that was often used in drunken crimes of passion. The basic set up of a good noir story is a sucker who makes one mistake and then follows a predestined spiral to the bottom. I'm pretty sure that Saturday night specials sent a lot of suckers down that particular track.

The final piece is called The Life and Deaths of a Saturday Night Special. Pick up a downloadable copy of the noir issue of Black Heart here.

And finally I have five new illustrations in a new book published by Alec Cizak. Pulp Modern is one class production. From the stunning cover by Jeremy Selzer (see below) to stories by Lawrence Block and other crime fiction masters, Pulp Modern is a book well worth adding to your collection. Pick up a copy through CreateSpace or soon through Amazon.

Although I write more than crime fiction I'm always drawn back to it since it allows me to write characters that don't live by normal constraints or laws. Although I loathe this lawlessness in real life I enjoy it in fiction because it allows me to create seemingly real world scenarios that have the inherent chaos of dreams. Thanks to Chad, Jimmy, Laura, Alec, and the other groovy people that I've become acquainted with, I'm now looking forward to writing and illustrating more of these dark and twisted worlds.

O.K., let's get this out of the way right away--I am the cantankerous coot of this review staff. I love old stuff first and foremost--Comics/Movies/Furniture/Toys/ and Music. I am not a complete coot but I have a foot in the door--I am willing to give most things a chance (unless it says IMAGE on it).